Partition resizing problem . . .

raybob95

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Well . . .

In June 2009 I built a high-end PC with an OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD as my main drive. In or around September this year, the drive died. So, I restored my most recent backup on a spare 80GB HDD I had laying around, and sent the SSD in for an RMA. I eventually got the drive back, restored the image from the 80GB HDD I had just made on the SSD and everything was just normal again. BUT, even when I was using the 80GB HDD, I had left the partition at the original 60GB, so it worked fine.

In November, my new SSD died . . . again. So I did the same trick, restored my most recent backup on that slow HDD, and sent the SSD in for an RMA. But, there was a problem RMAing, and I had to wait around 3 weeks to get my SSD back. In the mean time, I used diskmgmt.msc to resize my partition from 60GB to 80GB (I was using around 54GB) to help it run a little faster.

Now, I got my SSD back, but before I can restore the backup from my HDD on the SSD, I first have to resize the partition back to 60GB. And that's where the problem is. Windows won't do it. I still have only used ~53GB. Diskmgmt.msc says I can't make it any smaller than 67GB, and even then it says access denied after doing nothing for 10 minutes after starting the operation.

So now, I'm stuck with this really slow HDD and a good SSD just sitting next to me.

How can I go about resizing my partition so that I can make an image and restore it on my SSD again?

Thanks,
Raybob
 

Coreyosaur

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Just my 2 cents before someone comes around with a more experienced answer, deframent your 80gb drive. it takes time anyways, and if that is part of the solution down the road, you've already got that out of the way.
 
I have two suggestions, depending on what your problem really is.

One possibility is that you _see_ 53 GB of data, but there is the swap file, the hibernate file, the system restore data - lots and lots of stuff. System restore files can eat up a lot of space, and can be disabled in the System Restore tab of System Properties. BTW, what version of Windoze?

If the only problem is defragging, what I do to get a perfectly packed partition (say that three times fast with a swizzle stick in your mouth) is do an image dump with Norton Ghost 2003 (OK, use something newer), wipe the partition, and restore it. If your imager doesn't work on a track-by-track basis, you get a really nice restore.

Regards
 

raybob95

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From my experience the amount shown in My Computer includes the restore data, page file, etc. But that's beside the point since there is no swap file on the page, no system restore on that drive, and I disabled hibernation.
 

Well, I tried. Another potentially obvious one: If you've got 10 GB of non-OS data on there, copy it to an external drive, verify that your copy is good, delete it, and then move the now-smaller partition?
 

raybob95

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The only folders on the drive are Windows, Users, and Program Files. IDK how it got to 53 GB though it used to stay at ~32.